


Surfacer

by nalathequeen2186



Series: Branded [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cadrin Brosca, Dwarf Commoner Origin, Gen, in which cadrin knows nothing about the surface and makes a fool of herself because of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nalathequeen2186/pseuds/nalathequeen2186
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cadrin Brosca has just been recruited by the Grey Wardens, and learns a few important things about the surface world as she travels with Duncan to Ostagar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Falling Up

_Grey Warden._

Cadrin Brosca, born casteless, worthless brand, Carta thug, lifetime Dust Town resident - not that there was really any other place someone like her could reside - had been recruited into the Grey Wardens because she had committed one of the worst crimes a casteless could possibly commit.

_I should impersonate celebrities more often._

She had shaken off the shock of Duncan’s invitation, the knowledge that she would have to leave her beloved sister behind, enough to make an exit that she felt was worthy of a casteless criminal who had just been given the honor so many Orzammar warriors had been denied: she followed Duncan from Beraht’s hideout all the way to Orzammar’s surface doors with both middle fingers held aloft. She kept those fingers raised through the marketplace, as she passed the grand bridge to the Proving arena, as she walked through the Hall of Heroes with ancient Paragons’ eyes boring into her. She was likely supposed to be somber and heavy-hearted as she walked that last one, the noble caste’s egregious reminder to those that left for the surface that they were leaving caste and clan behind, but she had nothing left to lose on that part. She was already casteless, after all. Cadrin could feel the complete and utter fury from the higher castes as they watched her, knowing there was nothing they could do, and she reveled in it.

_Suck on it, noble caste fuckers. I’m off to fight your sodding darkspawn for you._

When the doors opened and she breathed outside air for the first time, she took a single step onto the surface, looked up, and nearly passed out.

 _For all their shitty stories,_ she remembered thinking as her head spun, _the dwarves of Orzammar got one thing right. I’m going to fall into the sky._

She had never fully believed that tale. Leske told her, after all, that he had been on the surface once, and judging from the fact that he hadn’t mysteriously disappeared during that job he had not, in fact, fallen up. And she knew that surfacers lived their entire lives under the sky without a problem. But somehow, all those stories came flooding back as she frantically tried to sort out up from down, and a primal fear of falling gripped her, as surely as if she had been standing at the very edge of the underground lava pits.

It took her a long, dizzying moment to realize that she had barely kept from toppling over by grabbing onto the closest pillar and holding on for dear life. She vaguely registered the snickers coming from the door guards, instead concentrating on regaining her balance and absolutely refusing to look anywhere but at the ground. It was stone - that was familiar. Her feet were still stuck to it, as they had always been underground. Maybe you only fell up if you looked up, she thought wildly. Maybe surfacers spent their entire lives looking down.

“They always do this,” said one of the door guards, sounding thoroughly amused. “Classic.”

Cadrin felt a pair of large hands grab her by the shoulders and pull her away from the pillar to stand upright - judging from the angle, the hands belonged to Duncan, but confirming that would require looking up again, and she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to endure another round of dizziness and amused laughter from onlookers.

“Are you all right?” Duncan’s voice came from above her.

Cadrin took a step away from the doors, wobbling a little on unsteady feet, and looked carefully outward, not letting the sky enter her field of vision. She saw some kind of greenish growth covering the ground, something that in Dust Town would have signaled _stay away, toxic;_ but up here people seemed to pay it no mind, which told her it was safe. Vendor stalls were set up in several rows further out from where she stood, manned by dwarves - some with brands, most without. There were a few humans here and there, the first ones she’d ever seen apart from Duncan, most at least a full head taller than the dwarves.

One of the dwarves browsing the stalls happened to glance over then, and saw this spectacle - a large human man in Grey Warden robes, and a casteless dwarf struggling to retain her balance - and walked up. “New arrival to the surface, I take it?” she said. Cadrin nodded, still keeping her head tilted downward. “And casteless-born too! Good to leave Orzammar behind, then, huh?”

“For me being a brand, you’re awfully friendly,” Cadrin muttered.

“Me? I’m surface-born. We don’t care about castes up here, not the way they do in Orzammar. So that brand on your face? Don’t mean nug droppings to me.”

“Mm.” Cadrin began to move forward again, a little faster now. Her head had stopped spinning so much and her feet were still solidly connected to the ground, which was a good sign.

Duncan spoke up. “This woman has been recruited into the Grey Wardens. She agreed to leave Orzammar in exchange for the chance to fight darkspawn.”

Cadrin saw the other dwarf’s eyebrows fly upwards as she whistled. “Wow. The Grey Wardens? I didn’t even know they recruited when there wasn’t a Blight.”

Duncan said something else to her, but Cadrin had stopped paying attention. A few steps later and she was at the top of the steps that led down from the grand entrance to Orzammar. A few others around the little marketplace had caught notice of her and the friendlier among them waved. Normally, people who saw her spit and glared. She had to admit this was a marked improvement.

“So,” said the dwarven woman’s voice from behind her, “I take it that stumbling bit was because you saw the sky? Most people who leave Orzammar do that their first time.”

“Do any of them ever fall up?”

She laughed. “Oh yes. It’s a big problem here on the surface. You just have to hang on really tight with your feet, and you’ll be fine.”

Cadrin couldn’t help but snort. She’d heard that line before, and a dozen others, meant to keep her and her ilk below the surface. She supposed that logically she knew she wouldn’t fall up, but the concern was still there, ingrained from a lifetime of fearmongering.

“But seriously,” the woman continued, “I’ve heard it just takes getting used to. Looking at it until you don’t feel so dizzy anymore might be a good first step.”

Look up again? Cadrin wasn’t keen on embarrassing herself further in front of every dwarf in the marketplace. She’d already been laughed at enough by the door guards. But maybe the woman had a point - it was clear that she’d seen this many times. So Cadrin walked down the steps, not eager to topple down them if she fell again, and then steadied herself against the stair base and looked up again. The dizziness was back, but not as bad as the first time, so she forced herself to keep looking at it.

It looked like an endless blue hole, far deeper than any pit she’d ever seen underground. Light was produced not by any lamps or lava sinks, but by an incredibly bright glowing sphere hanging in the middle of the infinite blue expanse. It hurt to look at it. Cadrin supposed that was the sun, something she had overheard the occasional visiting surfacer talk about. Rose during the day, then disappeared at night to create darkness. Nothing of the sort existed in Orzammar. It kept distinct day and night cycles, but any darkness during night was artificially created, and somewhat limited by the existence of the lava river under the main city. Dust Town was usually dark, being out of the range of the river’s glow. Under this sky, this sun, it would never have lacked for light.

“This is sodding amazing,” she said quietly.

The other dwarf chuckled, having followed her down the stairs along with Duncan, and said, “Yep! Bet it’s even better for you though. All you’ve had to look at your whole life is lava pits and nug shit, I bet. Just wait till you see a sunset.”

“I didn’t think anything could measure up to the fine beauty of a good nug shit.”

 “We must be off,” Duncan said over the woman’s laughter. She looked up at him and was pleased to find that her head only spun a little. “We have a lot of ground to cover, and the king will be expecting us soon.”

 _King_. Cadrin winced. So there were still kings on the surface. No castes, they said, but evidently there were still noble assholes roaming about, getting fat on their own privileges. Cadrin sighed at the image and stopped leaning against the stair base, trusting that she would stay anchored to the ground. “Where are we even going? How does Grey Wardening work, anyway? Not like I ever got much of a chance to learn about great heroes, after all. I should know as much as possible if I’m gonna be one, right?”

Duncan chuckled. “Very true. We are going to Ostagar, a fortress many miles from here. You had best prepare yourself for a bit of a journey. And don’t worry, I will fulfill all your curiosities about the Wardens as we walk.”

That was satisfactory, she supposed. Although she had to wonder just how long the journey really was. She’d lived in one city her whole life, and only had access to certain parts, at that. How long was a mile, anyway? And what exactly was Ostagar? All things to ask Duncan later. But for now, she said goodbye to the friendly dwarven woman from the marketplace, and began to follow Duncan away from the gates.

She paused a moment at the far end of the market, realizing that she still had no idea what Orzammar looked like from the outside. A desire to turn around and find out came over her - were they grand stone gates? Carved like Paragons, with dwarven runes inscribed on the pillars? Encrusted with precious gemstones, perhaps? And then Cadrin realized she didn’t care. She was never coming back here. She worried about Rica, left behind, but Rica had seemed certain she would be okay without her. Cadrin couldn’t think of a single other thing that might draw her back. Come back to poverty, to hunger and abuse and glares and crime and constant, crushing fear? Never.

So she continued forward, confident in the fact that at least this aspect of her old home could be forever left a mystery.


	2. Firsts

A mile, as it turned out, was fucking long.

It wasn’t like Cadrin was out of shape, exactly. Skinny, sure - her ribs showed through her skin, and her face was rather hollow, though she still looked better than she ever had before she joined the Carta - but the rest of her was lean muscle from years of fighting for Beraht (however much she had hated that, it kept her and Rica better fed than sweeping streets and gathering deep mushrooms ever had). But walking the streets of a single city was much different from walking across an entire landmass. It only took a few hours for her feet to start aching, and she felt constantly short of breath, but she refused to let this on to Duncan. She had been recruited into a band of legendary heroes despite all odds; she was not about to have him thinking she was a weakling and a whiner.

Cadrin had never realized just how _big_ the world was. She’d heard the stories of the Deep Roads, of course - how they extended underneath all Thedas, for hundreds of miles - but Orzammar alone had given her no sense of scale. They only walked a few miles, that first day, but the road seemed impossibly long, and it sent Cadrin’s mind reeling trying to imagine how much more of the world there could possibly be.

Duncan stopped them when the sun began to touch the ground. It happened far away, and Cadrin wondered what it was like to see it up close. Did the sun sink beneath the ground through a hole? What was it like for the people who lived next to the hole? The sky changed as well, going from a light, cheery blue to a wondrous blend of pinks, oranges, reds, and - opposite the sun - deep purple. Cadrin had only seen such rich colors in the clothing of spoiled nobles. The sky no longer looked like an endless pit - it looked instead like an expensive painting.

They made camp a little ways off the road, something which fascinated her. Cadrin knew that warriors took tents and bedrolls with them when they forged into the Deep Roads, but the concept of a bed one could carry with them, that wasn’t just a ragged blanket, was unfamiliar to her. She knew she probably looked like a child, climbing inside her tent and poking her head in and out of the flaps, but she couldn’t help herself. The novelty was too great.

Duncan told her over their small evening meal (and such a meal! Real bread and dried meat! When was the last time she had actually eaten a substantial meal?) that with luck, this would be the only night they camped in the wilderness. Tomorrow, if they made good time, they should reach a small village on the shore of Lake Calenhad, and from there they would take a boat across the waters, putting them closer to Ostagar than if they had taken the road. He showed her the map, which was fascinating, but highly confusing. Orzammar was a tiny dot in the upper left hand corner, while Ostagar’s dot was at the very bottom of the map. Most of it meant nothing to her, but she nodded anyway as though she understood. According to him, it would take about four days if they traveled hard to reach their destination - something they would need to do if they were to take part in the upcoming battle against the darkspawn there - and _that_ , she understood. She was eager to test her skills in an actual battle, rather than in a bloody skirmish or (and she smiled to herself at the memory) one on one while illegally entered in a Proving.

The night had become bitterly cold, colder even than the houses in Dust Town could get. As fascinated as she was with such cold, Cadrin kept herself huddled close to the fire, wrapped in the bedroll Duncan had lent her. It was smaller than would fit him, but still somewhat large for her; he had likely been expecting to return with a burly dwarven warrior, not some half-starved brand from the Carta. She tried to shake such thoughts from her mind. She was here now. Somehow, out of every dwarf in Orzammar, he had looked at her and decided she was the most worthy to come with him and become a Grey Warden. Rica’s words echoed back to her, the ones she spoke the morning of the Proving, “ _So go out there, and make something of yourself_.”

Words spoken when the most Cadrin ever thought she could be was the unnoticed sister of a noble’s concubine.

Duncan informed her that though sleeping on the ground might be uncomfortable, it was something Wardens often had to do, and so she had best get used to it as soon as possible. He needn’t have bothered. Nobles and upper castes got the fluffy, imported surface beds, but casteless more often than not slept on cold hard stone, so even just this borrowed bedroll felt like a luxury. Cadrin’s first night on the surface ended with a warm fire, a full belly, and a glow in her chest just bright enough to mask her concern over leaving Rica behind.

_She said she would be okay, she wanted you to find a new life on the surface. Don’t you dare disappoint her, Cadrin._


	3. Worthless Brand

She awoke the next morning to a gray fluffy ceiling. Vague stories floated in the back of her mind as she dressed inside her tent, things she had overheard from surface merchants plying their wares in Orzammar with the fake brands on their faces. Clouds, this was called. Covered the sky and caused water to fall to the earth. Water never fell from the stone ceilings in Orzammar. The idea that surfacers had to deal with such a thing on a regular basis was baffling.

_Well, get used to it. You live here now._

After a small meal, which still consisted of more than she would sometimes eat in a single day, they set out again, heading down a winding, downward-sloping path out of the craggy mountains. Sure enough, within an hour a light rain began to fall, distracting Cadrin from the exertion of walking with the odd sensation of water constantly trickling over her exposed skin. Duncan chuckled when he first noticed her wiping at the droplets on her face and arms.

“How are you liking the rain?” he asked her.

“It’s weird,” she muttered, cupping her hands and letting the water slowly pool in them. “Rain doesn’t happen underground.” She paused a moment, thinking. “Is it clean?”

“Hmm?”

“Is it safe to drink?”

“Yes. Rainwater is as clean as water comes.”

“If we had had this in Dust Town, it would have been a lot easier to find water that wouldn’t give you the shits. Uh, I mean, make you sick.”

 _You sodding idiot_ , she thought to herself, but Duncan was laughing. He didn’t seem at all perturbed by her language. He spoke so much more formally than anyone she’d ever known from Dust Town, almost like the upper castes except with less arrogance. It was good to know her language wouldn’t get her in trouble up here, at least.

Her next point of interest as they walked was the greenery that they passed, which only grew in amount as they descended. Plants like this simply didn’t exist underground - you had moss, lichen, mushrooms and mold, and that was about it. But Cadrin couldn’t help pestering Duncan about the plants she was seeing now - she had no idea that trees were even taller than humans, let alone twenty times as tall, and the idea that people liked and actively walked on grass was strange. That was what she had seen in Orzammar’s surface market, grass - ground covered in green usually meant mold to her, but grass smelled nice and often came up to her waist in soft, gentle strands. It waved around when the air moved - wind, Duncan called it - and made for a truly fascinating landscape.

They walked for most of the day, stopping for the occasional rest, and by evening they reached the town by the edge of the lake. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. _City_ was all Cadrin had ever experienced. City, and then slums. This town wasn’t even made out of stone - the houses were wood, something only higher castes ever got their hands on in Orzammar, imported from the surface. The paths between buildings were made of dirt and grass, and animals - cats and dogs mostly - roamed around freely. And then there was the stench.

“Ugh!” Cadrin couldn’t help muttering as they got closer. She’d smelled a lot of disgusting things in her lifetime, but nothing like this. “What is that smell?”

“That would be the fish,” Duncan said as they reached the outermost buildings.

Fish. A delicacy reserved almost exclusively for nobles, due to the difficulty in importing such a dish all the way into the mountains and underground without it spoiling on the way. She supposed most of Orzammar’s fish must come from this lake. With it so readily available, it certainly wouldn’t be a delicacy down here. But no one had ever warned her about the stench. She wondered how the locals could stand it, day in, day out. The same way she had gotten used to the constant smell of nugs and mold and stale piss in Dust Town, probably - by living there her whole life.

Duncan rented two small rooms in the local inn, and Cadrin went directly to hers to check it out. The furniture was by no means fancy, but it was still nicer than anything she had ever experienced. The bed was made of wood and some kind of fluffy mattress, and it was easily the most comfortable thing she had ever lay on in her life, not at all like the hard stone beds she and her sister had slept on their entire lives (well, Cadrin anyway - she tried not to think of her sister sleeping anywhere else).

They spent the few hours before bed in the tavern on the first floor. Duncan had neither forbade her nor given her permission to buy drinks - he seemed lost in his own thoughts - so she elected to do as the locals did and spent a silver or two on some kind of ale. She had never had a real drink before - she refused to touch the moss-wine her mother was so fond of, and never spent any coin she didn’t need to in Dust Town - so this was a luxury, this mug of ale. Within half an hour she was pleasantly tipsy. She watched the small crowd inside the tavern for a while, sitting at a table with Duncan and marveling at the way she was going unnoticed. She had never seen so many humans gathered in one place. There were even a few elves, she recognized them by their ears - a couple elven tavern wenches, and a few others sitting in a corner who looked like workers of some kind. She couldn’t help noticing that the elves’ clothing seemed to be patchier and more threadbare than most of the humans’, and pursed her lips.

She had been hoping that maybe there were _no_ dividing lines on the surface. In Orzammar, you could tell someone’s caste just by looking at them. Patchy clothing, tied-back hair, maybe an apron - servant caste. Gleaming armor and a smug expression - warrior. Up here, it seemed the hierarchy was a little simpler. Human meant good, elf meant bad, or at least lesser. _I already like the elves better_ , she decided, and gave a friendly smile to the first one that glanced her way. The elf blushed and turned her head away again, but Cadrin noticed her trying to hold back a smile of her own.

Cadrin glanced at the door just as another elf walked in - and froze. Her legs went numb in shock and fear. The elf had a brand on his face. Not like hers, it was on his forehead rather than on his cheek and it wasn’t in dwarven script, but there was no mistaking it. “There are no castes on the surface,” she’d been told, and yet here he was, a man with a brand on his face to match hers. Her stomach churned and her heart began to pound. She was such a fool to think she could escape her station by coming to the surface. Worthless.

Duncan must have noticed her expression, or the way her knuckles had gone white gripping her mug, because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

She heard her voice say, “Him. The elf. He has a brand. On his face.” Her tone was flat, nearly emotionless, in stark contrast to the panic raging inside her.

Duncan looked over and saw the elf, who had taken a seat in a corner, and shook his head. “That is no brand, Cadrin. That is a tattoo; it is merely decoration and does not denote status.”

Cadrin felt a slight fluttering of hope in her chest that she quickly squashed down. “A tattoo?” she repeated. “Non-casteless would sometimes get tattoos. But not on their face. Face markings were for brands. Us.”

“I can assure you,” he said as she tried to get her racing heart under control, “that man does not have a casteless brand. There are no strictly defined castes here as there are in Orzammar. Social classes still exist, but they are by no means set in stone - ah, so to speak.”

Set in stone. A pun. How glorious. “Sometimes casteless would get tattoos on their face,” she said quietly. “They tried to make it look like the brand was part of the decoration. Upper castes always scoffed at us for it. Told us we took pride in being worthless criminals.”

“Let me make this clear, to allay any concerns you may have,” he said gently. “Your brand does not mean anything here. On the surface, you are an equal. Your past does not have to follow you, if you do not wish it to.”

She stared at the table.

“Many Wardens are criminals and outcasts. We do not discriminate. Humans, elves, dwarves, even Qunari - kings, mages, beggars, thieves, all are welcome as long as they are willing to dedicate their lives to fighting the darkspawn.”

She nodded slowly. “Do… do I have to tell the other Wardens? That I am - was casteless?”

“Not if you don’t wish to.”

She stayed silent for a long moment. She had to admit, that made her feel better. No one even had to know up here, as long as they didn’t already know what the brand meant. She would hardly be able to hide her exile - she knew she would never pass as a surface dwarf, and hardly any dwarf would leave Orzammar willingly with all the isolationist propaganda fed to the population - but she didn’t have to be the former criminal, the reformed thief and murderer. She could just be Cadrin the Grey Warden.

“Thanks,” she said finally. “I think, uh… I think I’m tired. I’m going to sleep now.”

“Of course,” Duncan said, waving a hand in the direction of the stairs. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we will be taking a boat across the lake.”

“Ooh, fun,” Cadrin said, unsure if she was being sarcastic or sincere, and trudged off to her rented room. She didn’t go to sleep right away. Instead she rolled around on the fluffy bed for a while and thought of Rica. It had only been a couple days since she’d left. How was Rica doing? Did she have enough food? Was her patron - whoever he was - treating her well? She had sounded, well, enamored with him when she and Cadrin had talked. Cadrin wouldn’t have trusted a noble as far as she could spit, but she would rather see Rica happy. _I’ll write letters_ , she decided. _Surely the Wardens wouldn’t object to me writing letters to my sister._

_This is going to be good. I'm going to be a hero. I don't have to be a worthless brand anymore. I'm a Grey fucking Warden._

With that happy thought fresh in her mind, she drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the only stories I've worked on in, well, years, so hopefully it's not too rusty. Cadrin is one of my most beloved OCs, so I expect there will be more stories about her in the future. Also I might go back and edit this later if I find a part that makes me go eugh no this needs to be changed.


End file.
